Health, place and society - Dr Mary Shaw

Health, Place and Society is a groundbreaking text covering both the main issues in medical geography, and also overlapping with key issues in medical sociology. The approach focuses on the empirical, outlining the main research questions in medical geography, addressing how these can be investigated (covering both concepts and measurements) and then reviewing what is known about the issue. The book looks at the more traditional issues of medical geography such as environmental factors, including pollution, prevailing weather conditions, seasonal effects and so on. But the authors also argue that research published over the last ten years has demonstrated that social factors are at least as important in determining the geography of health, particularly the degenerative diseases of the Western world. The book is therefore pitched at both geography and sociology students. It is also international in scope, with examples from Europe, America and the former Soviet Union/communist bloc. These examples are used comparatively with British case studies.